NYC - Public Lecture Series feat. Eric Cline

1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed

For more than three hundred years during the Late Bronze Age, from about 1500 BC to 1200 BC, the Mediterranean region played host to a complex international world in which Egyptians, Mycenaeans, Minoans, Hittites, Assyrians, Babylonians, Cypriots, and Canaanites all interacted, creating a cosmopolitan and globalized world-system such as has only rarely been seen before the current day. It may have been this very internationalism that contributed to the apocalyptic disaster that ended the Bronze Age. When the end came, as it did after centuries of cultural and technological evolution, the civilized and international world of the Mediterranean regions came to a dramatic halt in a vast area stretching from Greece and Italy in the west to Egypt, Canaan, and Mesopotamia in the east. Large empires and small kingdoms, that had taken centuries to evolve, collapsed rapidly. With their end came the world’s first recorded Dark Ages.

It was not until centuries later that a new cultural renaissance emerged in Greece and the other affected areas, setting the stage for the evolution of Western society as we know it today. Blame for the end of the Late Bronze Age is usually laid squarely at the feet of the so-called Sea Peoples, known to us from the records of the Egyptian pharaohs Merneptah and Ramses III. However, as was the case with the fall of the Roman Empire, the end of the Bronze Age empires in this region was not the result of a single invasion, but of multiple causes. The Sea Peoples may well have been responsible for some of the destruction that occurred at the end of the Late Bronze Age, but it is much more likely that a concatenation of events, both human and natural — including earthquake storms, droughts, rebellions, and systems collapse — coalesced to create a “perfect storm” that brought the age to an end.

Dr. Eric H. Cline is Professor of Classics and Anthropology, Chair of the Department of Classical and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, and Director of the Capitol Archaeological Institute at The George Washington University, in Washington DC. A Fulbright scholar and National Geographic Explorer, Dr. Cline holds degrees in Classical Archaeology (BA, Dartmouth 1982), Near Eastern Archaeology (MA, Yale 1984), and Ancient History (Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania 1991). At GW, Dr. Cline has won the Trachtenberg Prize for Teaching Excellence as well as the Trachtenberg Prize for Faculty Scholarship, the two highest honors at the University; he is the first faculty member to have won both awards. An active field archaeologist, he has excavated and surveyed in Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Cyprus, Greece, Crete, and the United States for 30 seasons since 1980; he is currently Co-Director of two excavations in Israel: Megiddo (biblical Armageddon) and Tel Kabri. Dr. Cline has written (authored or co-authored) ten books and edited (or co-edited) six more volumes, all with prestigious presses, including Oxford, Cambridge, Princeton, Michigan, and National Geographic. He is perhaps best known for writing The Battles of Armageddon: Megiddo and the Jezreel Valley from the Bronze Age to the Nuclear Age (2000); Jerusalem Besieged: From Ancient Canaan to Modern Israel (2004); From Eden to Exile: Unraveling Mysteries of the Bible (2007); Biblical Archaeology: A Very Short Introduction (2009) and The Trojan War: A Very Short Introduction (2013), plus 1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed (2014). His books have been translated into nine languages, including Serbian, Bulgarian, Hungarian, German, Portuguese, Korean, Russian, Italian, and Spanish (the latter three forthcoming); three of them have won the Biblical Archaeology Society's "Best Popular Book on Archaeology" award (2001, 2009, and 2011). His books have also been featured as a Main Selection of the Natural Science Book Club, a Main Selection of the Discovery Channel Book Club, a USA Today 'Books for Your Brain' Selection, and selected by the AAUP for Public and Secondary School Libraries and by Choice Magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title.

Date: 11/3/2014

Time: 6:00pm Reception, 7:00pm Lecture

Location: NYC Headquarters, 46 E 70th Street, New York, NY, 10021

Member Ticket Price: Free

Guest Ticket Price: $20

Student Ticket Price:

Free for EC Student Members, $5 w/ a valid Student ID

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